Lamar Op-Ed

Work

I have figured out another difference between medicine on the High Plains and medicine in the city.

I did some further navel gazing and decided the difference might even be one of the most important factors in America's financial woes.

Out here, a rancher/farmer will drag himself or herself out of a warm bed on a cold and windy--always windy, forever windy--morning because cattle must be fed or moved from one pasture to another or a field must be sprayed or seeded or overdue maintenance on a piece of equipment must be addressed.

If that doesn't happen, there are measurable consequences.

In the city, there are many workers who start to drag themselves out of a warm bed, on their way to a warm office--another difference--and if they look out the window and see snow falling or hear on the radio the temperature is minus three, the bed may be just too attractive.

They call work, hold their nose so they sound stuffed up, cough, moan, tell someone at work they're sick, and climb back under the covers.

The measurable consequences? Zip. Nada. Rien. Zero. No cattle will starve. No field will be overrun by weeds. No engine will burn up because its oil was not changed. There will be an unoccupied chair in an empty cubicle.

Period.

Out here, you folks actually do something. A huge number of people in the city go to and from work each day, but they don't do anything. And they know it.

Deep within themselves, they know it. That knowledge makes them sick. It eats at them and tears at the fabric of their self-esteem.

Human beings need purpose.

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We are happiest when we're making a difference, when we can see some sort of confirmation that yes, we did labor for a day--or a year--or a lifetime.

This is hardly a startling insight.

One of Toyota's "secrets" of high quality production was integrating every line worker into a high level of responsibility for his part in the manufacture of automobiles. Any worker could press a button that would stop the entire production line if he felt a mistake was about to be passed down that line.

This, along with a familial loyalty to his paternalistic employer, created a highly effective industrial environment.

Then, the bottom line forced Toyota to change this environment. Part time employees replaced life-longers. The bottom line managers, anything but paternalistic, abandoned training, experience, and individual responsibility.

Loyalty died. So did Toyota's once proud reputation.

When I worked in Aurora, I saw thousands of patients struggling with the sense that their jobs were meaningless. The struggle was manifested by depression, vague complaints, incapacitation by minor illness or injury, and any injury incurred while working was always devastating, horribly painful, with a doubtful recovery.

On the High Plains, I've taped a broken shoulder to the chest of a rancher so he could finish repairing a long run of fence knocked down by a blizzard. "Doc, I gotta finish it. Those damn cows'll be all over the whole county if I don't." You folks do something. You make a measurable difference.

You work well past the age when city people retire. You also live longer--when you're not struck down by cancer from the agents you work with or hobbled by degenerative arthritis so severe that you can be heard walking across a parking lot.

Hard work gives purpose, but it also takes a toll.

However, on measure, I'd swear in a court of law that purpose trumps its lack every day of the week.

The 3P (Pretty Powerful People) have forgotten this. In fact, the 3P have created a configuration for corporations and governments where documentation is more important than creation, where forms in triplicate, dysfunctional electronic medical records, and multiple layers of supervision smother the efforts of folks trying to do a job.

The only reason America hasn't collapsed financially is that we had such a lead on the rest of the world following the Second World War we could coast for half a century. WWII energized this country to a degree unseen in the history of civilized society.

Everyone did something. Everyone made something. Everyone felt a sense of purpose.

If you doubt this is so, just find a Rosy the Riveter or talk to someone who as a child worked a Victory Garden or collected metal to be melted down and reused in the manufacture of trucks or tanks.

Following the war, the industrial might of America created a society that was the envy of the world. I hear scoffing from the back rows, but I promise you, the refugees who managed to make it to Staten Island, having escaped the devastation of Tokyo, Berlin, London, Moscow, Stalingrad, Minsk, Krakow, or Dresden, did not regard the Lady, as the Statue of Liberty was called, with cynicism.

They regarded her with hope. We failed that hope.

We failed it so badly that the children of Rosy the Riveter rebelled against all that was American. We failed because the subtle supremacy of the soul, the invisible power of concepts like meaning, purpose, and individual self-esteem are too delicate for the 3P's to grasp.

We had the benefit of industrial might, but the fragile forces that allow us to get up each day and face life's assaults evaporated.

War fueled America's industrial explosion. War is a battle for survival, the sort of battle that can pull us from our beds.

Life on the High Plains can be a battle for survival. Life is hard. It's also accessible. It's more basic, more clear-cut than in the city.

Out here, patients are too busy doing something to be sick. There aren't many worried well on the High plains.

Our economy needs the basics. It needs clear-cut goals. To heck with the financial games pawned off as true economic growth by the thieves of Wall Street.

How about we make something? How about we repair our infrastructure?

How about we really do develop alternative energy and thus really do declare war on the loss our wealth to those whose sole strength is that they sit on oceans of oil? How about we stop arguing about silliness and find a way of making our young people as educated and smart as they should be?

How about we teach them enough "civics" and history that they understand what the founding principles of this republic really were?

FULL DISCLOSURE: At the risk of making many of you as angry as a smoked out beehive, I would like to suggest those principles were a bit more complicated and slightly more revolutionary than just the right to bear arms or prohibiting someone from burning the flag. Those principles were an attempt to codify the dignity of all men and women, to sanctify freedom of thought and belief.

Along the way, perhaps we can foster a society and some new 3P's that are mature and intuitive enough to recognize the power of purpose, self-esteem, and individual dignity.

If so, we won't need a war to pull us from our beds filled with purpose. If so, we will finally be able to save us from ourselves.

Dr. Waggoner is a family practice specialist with Weisbrod Memorial Hospital and sees patients in Wiley and Eads Colo.. His column appears on Fridays in The Lamar Ledger.

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